E-government And The Transformation Of Government Functions

In the 1990s, E-government first came into existence when the traditional bureaucracy was widely criticized by most of the western counties. After that, it rapidly grew with "Reinventing Government Movement" started by the United States. And then, along with the Information Age, it was known and accepted all over the world. It gradually became a very important technological method applied by the government's authority, even one of the important standard judging the modernization. To some extent, the development of the E-government just meets the demand of transforming the traditional bureaucracy to modern government. Thus, it not only helps the government in solving the problems concerning democracy and efficiency, but also changing government functions, streamlining government institutions and innovating administrative means, among which the influence E-government has on changing government functions is most. On the one hand, E-government is of great benefit for the government to uplift administrative efficiency, promote transparency in government affairs and make decision-making structure more democratic so as to enhance the public trust in government. In this way, E-government provides a sound foundation for changing the government functions. On the other hand, with the construction recombined and the process rebuilt E-government pushes the transition of government functions. Besides, E-government optimizes the macro-conditioner of the government in practice and means of public services, and does good to technology upgrading and the quality of the human resource. Thus, E-government and the transition of government functions are closely interconnected.E-government in China starts quite late, but develops very fast, and is soon widely applied in various government departments. Shanghai Administration of Industry and Commerce (SAIC) is the government department in charge of company registration, which starts E-government earlier than others. It is true that E-government develops along with SAIC develops. Although huge success has been made, there are many problems occur when developing E-government in SAIC, which shared by many other departments. That is because the development background of E-government in China is very different from western countries while the economic development level is also very different. One can not straightly apply it in China. In order to solve those problem, we should analyze the successful experiences in the western countries first, and properly learn from them.